The other day Tim pointed out to me that TeaChat's own Nada opened a UK virtual Puerh Boutique and is offering a select few teas and a bit of teaware.

It's called NadaCha and I am considering ordering samples. Most of the offerings are names that are new to me. After following Nada's blog,a Felicific Life, about his recent travels in Yunnan, I have a good feeling about this tea. The selection is different from other things I have seen and the prices are quite modest. I don't much like the web interface; it's hard to navigate, but at least it's not a big shop.

OK, I've ordered a sample of each of his teas. Between his busy travel schedule and the Royal Air Mail, it might be a while before they arrive, but when they do I will try to post a least a couple reviews of them here.

slurp wrote:Salsero, how did this go - did your teas ever arrive? any good?

Teas arrived, they look beautiful. Nada emailed me to make sure I had received them in good condition. So far I have only tasted one, the 12 Gentlemen "Da Bei Hao," which had a lot of chaqi, and a bit of which I included in the Pass Box. Nada explained that

'12 Gentlemen' is the name adopted by a group of puerh aficionados in Kunming.Not a factory per se, but they oversee the picking, processing and pressing of these bings.

The samples are a generous 30+ grams and a great deal at the prices he is charging. He also included some extras, like a taste of his own limited edition Nannuo Shan pressing. Once I get the Puerh Box Pass off in the mail, I hope to devoted some time to exploring these beauties from Nada. Last week I also ordered a teapot from him.

I enjoyed "A Felicific Life" very much. For people like myself who has never been to Yunnan, it gave me a chance to see places that I've never seen before. The sharing of his experience/adventure is worth something, I think...

I've received quite a bit of feedback from that post - it seems it has very much polarised people. Some appreciated my points of view, some felt that it was a slight against those selling tea in China. This wasn't my intention.

My intention was to make some observation on the markedly different approaches to tea I'd found in these two places and the recognition of which aspect of tea culture I would like to cultivate within myself. I'm sure, having spend some time in mainland China and in Taiwan that you can appreciate the difference in these approaches to tea.

The tea and teaware I currently sell, were sent back due to friends asking me to bring back some tea for their teahouses. When I got back I sent some of it to these friends as I had promised, but was left with quite a bit. I pondered what to do with it - I didn't want to have that commercial aspect corrupting the rest of my tea life, but also I'm not a rich man who can afford to hold on to all this tea. And so I decided to sell it, not trying to make a huge profit, not just selling it to move some product, but only selling those teas I'd be happy to receive myself.

This brief foray into tea salesmanship has been quite interesting for me. I've noticed again and again the potential to get completely lost in the world of profits and product & had to keep a close watch on myself. On the other hand, I've received many emails from people who bought tea saying that they're very much enjoying it - from that I get some kind of pleasure.

Will I continue to sell tea once this stock is exhausted? I'm not sure. There are definately some compromises in this for me. I guess I need to make this decision for myself. I read with interest a blog post Imen made recently about this dichotomy of running a tea business. I can very much understand her points. But then as tea consumers, unless we grow the tea ourselves, we all do need someone to sell us our tea. I believe this is possible, without compromising one's own integrity and relationship with tea. Is it for me in the long term? Not sure.

If you felt you were fooled into reading an infomercial, I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention.

I ordered the 2008 12 Gentlemen "Chun Ya Shen Yun". Actually this was my first shou. I find this cake to be according to the description. Not as sweet as many other shou I've tried, but the taste is very balanced and pleasing. It gives you 10+ infusions becoming sweeter in later infusions. I must remember to reorder this cake before it runs out.